Empowering or taking over? A job design perspective on the effects of cobots' introduction in the manufacturing industry

Emanuela Shaba, Alessandra Lazazzara, Luca Solari and Antonella Delle Fave

Chapter 18 in Research Handbook on Human Resource Management and Disruptive Technologies, 2024, pp 254-269 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: With the introduction of cobots at work, the academic discussion has been centered mostly on the functional aspects of human-robot collaboration and also on the implications that it has on the future of jobs. From a work design perspective, it is crucial to consider the meaning that the shared tasks at the intersection level of such collaboration have for individual aspects of work. Holding a job design perspective as an analytical toolkit, in this chapter we show that for different routine and nonroutine tasks’ work characteristics, such as autonomy, task variety and physical and cognitive demands, task and skill development are simultaneously imbued with threats and opportunities. Such opposing logics suggest the importance to focus on the unintended and indirect effects of technology, and the great need to shape work design considering human-centered technologies. The study has implications for human resource management, as an important stakeholder in mitigating potential risks of poorly designed jobs.

Keywords: Business and Management; Innovations and Technology (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802209242.00029 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:elg:eechap:21373_18

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().